A 15-year wait for the film realisation of Patrick Süskind's best-selling novel Perfume ended last night with the Munich premiere of the project which many thought would be impossible to recreate on the big screen.

Set in the murky backstreets of 18th century Paris, the book tracks Jean-Baptiste Grenouille - born without a personal odour but who develops a superior olfactory sense - on his murderous quest for the perfect scent. With international sales of 15m copies, it is the most successful German novel for decades. It also caught the imagination of many film directors.

Stanley Kubrick was among those who fantasised about filming the book before he reputedly ditched it as "unfilmable".

Other big names at some time linked to the elusive project were Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Tim Burton. But, years after the book's publication, it was finally the German cinema director Tom Tykwer who took the hot seat.

Süskind is keeping far from the limelight. Born in 1949, he has a sparse bibliography of books and plays, and lives a reclusive life in Munich. But the film, starring Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman and newcomer Ben Whishaw as Grenouille, is already being lauded as a likely hit of the year. With a budget of €50m, it is claimed to be the most costly German film to date.

However it remains to be seen whether the film can replicate the key to the book's success: its ability to conjure up smell.

Born without a personal odour, Grenouille is obsessed with creating a perfect smell for himself, an olfactory mission which impels him to murder virgins for their scent. Süskind's descriptions dwell on the stench of the fish market and pungent Parisian alleys.

The film's producer, Bernd Eichinger, the man behind the controversial Hitler film Downfall, said the film aims to bring smell to celluloid by imitating the author's attention to detail. "While Süskind used the clear and exact power of words, we use the power of image, noise and music," he said. "When filming a lawn in sunlight, or even a single tree, all that is needed is absolute optical precision and then smells are created."

But although German film critics praised the costumes and acting, many argued that the film fell short of conveying the sense of smell. The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung said it did not match up to the book and "in the end failed to emerge as the orgasm of a film it wanted to be". Meanwhile, Die Zeit weekly ridiculed the film as "big nose theatre", saying it rather obviously tried to convey smell through close-up shots of the protagonist's nose - of which there were no less than 27.